


roots in my dreamland

by Applemysteries



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, boyfriends!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29526564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Applemysteries/pseuds/Applemysteries
Summary: Before they made him forget Steve, before they made him forget everything, Bucky used to let his mind drift and spin out Steve’s future.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	roots in my dreamland

**Author's Note:**

> for maddie, my faithful boyfriends (& poly!!!) companion.

Before they made him forget Steve, before they made him forget everything, Bucky used to let his mind drift and spin out Steve’s future. Steve is scrappy and stubborn, young - not the medical experiment he went and got himself turned into. He laughs, learns to carry himself gentler, learns that he can’t fix the entire world and that’s not a bad thing, Bucky even lets Steve in his mind settle down and marry some simple girl, one who doesn’t think his life only gains meaning when he’s trying to lose it. One who loves Steve the way Bucky did-- or close to it, since no one can ever match the way Bucky loves him. Loved him.

He doesn’t get to keep the love. It falls away from him like a body falling off of a train, like a hand reaching out but grasping nothing but air. Like a bone saw and cold metal and cold everywhere and screaming.

Steve in the middle of the street doesn’t make sense. Bucky doesn’t know it’s Steve, yet, but he knows. 

_I knew him_.

Knew a boy who weighed no more than a sack of potatoes yet went out and got his knuckles bloodied every week because bloody knuckles mattered. Bucky rounding the corner and helping him, offering a hand, that mattered. Bucky remembers Steve as scrawny but never small and he remembers Steve as suddenly not-so-small and people wanted him to lay his chest on live grenades and jump out of planes without parachutes and die for them.

Bucky wanted Steve to live.

Bucky can handle that his mad scientist turned him into a horror show, can handle that he’s not even him anymore, that he’s just some ghost with bloody hands -- hand -- and unreliable memories. Because Steve standing in the middle of the street speaking his name doesn’t make sense. It’s not even his Steve.

(every Steve is his).

Bucky used to dream, when the fever took over and his whole body was nothing but trembling and knowing he was going to die here (he wasn’t, of course, why kill something if you can make sure it keeps hurting, never stops hurting). He used to dream Steve would walk in, his Steve, and say his name and then somehow it would be over. They’d be on coney island walking the grounds and yakking about the girls and exchanging their best, knowing smiles. He sees Steve standing in the street — which doesn’t make fucking sense — and he remembers wanting.

Bucky remembers loving Steve as he’s splitting Steve’s skin open with his fists. Maybe a little earlier, when he’s shooting him, and Steve won’t quit trying. Still, he lets him fall out of the plane and into the river and he doesn’t hold his hand out; he can’t because he’s remembering what they took from him, remembering what he stood in the street and stared at Steve-not-Steve and wanted.

He wanted Steve to be fucking happy. He wanted his Steve who wore newspapers in his shoes and lied through his teeth always saying he was fine and who woke up next to Bucky in the mornings wearing low-slung pajamas and a shit-eating grin to be fucking happy. He wanted Steve to be Steve and not this-- still some egomaniacs plaything, always one chess move away from being sacrificed for martyrdom.

He drags Captain America out of the Potomac with one hand, doesn’t caress a hand across his face to see if Steve’s still in there, to make sure Steve knows he doesn’t have to die like this. They can be in Brooklyn, they can be happy, they can be more than this.

Bucky remembers leaving Steve, though he doesn’t understand it. There was a war, of course, and expectation and Steve couldn’t go so Bucky left him. He felt less than, without Steve, and lesser than every day since. When he’s not in Brooklyn, not with Steve, just by himself with muscle memory he can’t get rid of and he's flinching at every fucking sound like an animal which he also can’t get rid of — he tries to get it back. And all he keeps coming back to is Steve. His Steve, any Steve, even Captain America.

Whatever he’s going to find is behind this red-headed woman (and he’ll punch Steve right in the head, honestly, he will) who opens the door expressionless, unimpressed, even, and her equally unimpressed male friend both of whom somehow _know_ who Bucky is even though he’s got a cap on and his metal arm covered. And right when Bucky’s brain is on the verge of _remembering—_ the woman smiles all soft and sad and moves to let him pass and Bucky supposes it doesn’t matter.

“Took you long enough,” the guy taunts, and then they’re both gone and it’s just Bucky here with whatever is going to happen.

“Do you remember me?” Steve asks, coming around the corner and there’s that beautiful face, there’s the man he loves, there’s what seventy years of torture couldn’t make him forget.

“Yes,” Bucky says, and then there’s nothing more to say.

Steve walks over, holds Bucky’s hand -- hands, both of them -- and he kisses Bucky’s cheek and Bucky’s jaw and Bucky’s forehead and Bucky’s mouth, blessedly, his mouth over and over and over and Bucky kisses him back and holds him back and it feels whole, familiar to be loved like this.

“I used to dream about you,” Bucky murmurs.

“Oh, yeah?” Steve teases, ever the scoundrel. “What about?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky says. “I have it now.”


End file.
